Climate change rapidly melting Kashmir glaciers
Pastor Dale Morgan
Climate change rapidly melting Kashmir glaciers*
SRINAGAR, India, Sept 24 (AFP) Sep 24, 2007
Himalayan glaciers are melting fast in Indian Kashmir as a result of
global warming, causing water levels of regional streams and rivers to
drop by two-thirds, a report said Monday.
The report by ActionAid entitled "On the Brink?" called for urgent cuts
greenhouse gas emissions to help save the region's fragile environment.
Himalayan glaciers are the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers,
crucial for the 1.3 billion people who live downstream. The melting
glaciers could endanger water supplies for hundreds of millions of
people, it said.
"Emission of greenhouse gases is the biggest threat to Kashmir's ecology
and environment," said Arjimand Talib, head of ActionAid's Kashmir
chapter, releasing the report in Srinagar, summer capital of the
revolt-hit region.
"Many of the areas have seen a complete disappearance of small glaciers.
In other areas, the height of the small glaciers has reduced to over
one-fourth of the original height," the 28-page report from the non
governmental group said.
Major glaciers were also melting fast, the report said, while water
levels in almost all the streams and rivers in Kashmir have decreased by
two-thirds during the last 40 years.
"Hundreds of springs spread all across Kashmir have either dried up or
are in the process of drying up," the report added.
The source of the data in the report is unclear, but a study of 466
Himalayan glaciers by scientists with the Indian Space Research
Organisation has estimated their area had shrunk by 21 percent since the
1960s.
That study, published in January, was based on satellite images.
The quantity of snowfall in Kashmir known as "Switzerland of the East"
has "clearly reduced over the last few decades," the latest report added.
"Although occasionally it does have spells of heavy snowfall, the
inability of snow to freeze and develop into hard and longer-lasting
crystals owing to higher temperatures has resulted in faster meltdown."
Cement-making plants in Kashmir were producing heat-trapping gases that
could lead to no snow in the plains over the next two decades, it said.
"Stringent laws need to be put in place, not only for checking emissions
from private vehicles and industrial units, but also for large-scale
emissions from government and military establishments."
The report said more than 300 military convoys producing high levels of
greenhouse gases move every day across Kashmir, where soldiers are
battling a deadly separatist Islamic insurgency.
It also recommended a shift of focus from "infrastructure-intensive
tourism to eco-tourism" and opposed religious "pilgrim tourism."
Every year tens of thousands of Hindus visit cave shrines of Amarnath in
the north and Vaishno Devi in the south, leaving behind mounds of litter.